At the Intersection of COVID-19
By Srishti Bali
I’ve been seeing lots of information floating around in the last few months about the value of ‘self-reflection’ in the current time of uncertainty.
For many, that self-reflection has been about their values.
Whilst we shelter inside our homes, the pandemic has perhaps exposed us to our metaphorical shelteredness from the cracks within our society.
I know for myself, it has made me deeply consider how the pandemic has created a candid picture of women’s safety (or rather the lack there of).
As a society, we only understand something to be a problem when we witness confronting behaviour that is often clearly violent. This understanding branches out to many crimes that we often do not label as criminal in our mind unless they are aggressive and often physical.
For anyone who has experienced family violence, worked in the family violence sector or studied it would understand that physical violence is usually the tip of the iceberg.
As a government leading the way in family violence reform, the Victorian Government defines family violence as:
Emotional abuse, financial abuse, physical or sexual violence, and coercive, controlling or emotionally or psychologically abusive behaviour from a person in your family or an intimate partner. This can include abusers restricting your movement or isolating you from friends or family. Family violence can make you feel afraid for your own safety or wellbeing, or for a family member.
Although in ‘normal’ circumstances, governments can be applauded for their work in areas of social policy, the global pandemic has put these areas under a microscopic lens — and that is not necessarily a bad thing.
Anyone who has learnt about intersectionality, specifically in a policy setting, knows that the term extends beyond just considerations of race, gender and class as theoretical ideas and applies lived experience as a crucial part of the critical lens in which policy can be implemented and assessed on an individual, relationship and structural level.
Unfortunately, that element of ‘lived experience’ is hard to fathom if policy makers and implementers are not representative of cross sections of the community. ‘Consulting with Stakeholders’ is not a substitute for ‘lived experience’, if the people making and implementing policy are not increasingly representative of cross sections within our community.
In 2019, the Journal of Social Policy published an article by scholars, Ian McIntosh and Sharon Wright, who spoke about the concept of ‘lived experience’ in the context of social policy. Specifically, in reference to feminism and lived experience, a large aspect often considered in family violence policy, they referenced the ‘Women’s experience’ to be the de facto experience of only a certain subgroup of privileged (white, middle class, heterosexual) women. In this context they highlighted the importance of incorporating lived experiences which were otherwise ignored in such spaces of social policy.
When you look at the Australian population, or even the population on a state level, almost every person encompasses more than one identity, whether that’s about gender, race, class, ability or sexuality. In this context, a lack of intersectionality in policy actually misses a large demographic that you may not be able to adequately help!
In the context of the pandemic, these gaps within social policy are even further exacerbated for women who encompass many other identities as physical disconnection with family members and friends who may otherwise create a safe space for them becomes apparent and perhaps a policy framework that cannot holistically cater to their needs puts them in a dangerous position.
Even coming from my own lived experience as a woman of colour, I cannot switch off the complexity surrounding my identity. It intrinsically defines me and unfortunately, I cannot mask how I physically present to the world and the experiences that it inherently produces for me if I presented otherwise. So, when I hear backlash about incorporating intersectionality in policy, it becomes increasingly a rejection of my own lived experience but also denies the ability of policy makers to operate as effective policy makers through excluding a large demographic of our population.
So perhaps when looking at the way policy is implemented, evaluated and made, we must look beyond its traditional understanding and actually live up to that ‘innovative’ policy making governments rave about that includes demographics of our Australian communities beyond a surface level.
